Workers Solidarity Movement

New Years Eve in Dublin saw a gathering on the Hapenny bridge in Dublin to mark the anniversary of 'Operation Lead' when the Israeli attack on Gaza killed more that 1400 people.  Meanwhile in Israel there were arrests of Israeli activists protesting the killing of a Palestinian women, Jawaher Abu Rahmah by teargas.

Saturday 18th December saw activists from a number of pro-choice organizations including the WSM rally at the GPO in Dublin to mark the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the ABC case. The short rally which took place in the bitter cold had been called at just over 24 hours notice by the Feminist Open Forum but still attracted a few dozen activists who have been involved in campaigning against Ireland's ban on abortion in the last decades.

Limerick County Council has revived an old bylaw to enable it to seize caravans and cars belonging to Travellers.   The move comes as hundreds of members of the families of Travellers who call Rathkeale home arrive for the Christmas break.  This is an annual event that has been going on for years. Due to the lack of facilities families often end up camping on the roadside. This unavoibably causes tension with other local residents and road users. The county council has never made any serious effort to address the shortage of short term halting facilities in Rathkeale over the Christmas despite having fore knowledge of the problem.

Doctors For Choice welcomes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in favour of one of the three women applicants in the ABC case and demands that the government now legislate on abortion provision as a matter of urgency. Much time wasting and obstruction has taken place while womens health has been, and continues to be compromised by the lack of abortion provision in Ireland. This ruling confirms what Irish doctors have known for many years; that Irish women are being denied reproductive justice in their own country. The three cases were representative of a broad spectrum of women who are forced to travel abroad to access abortion.

The 1% Network has sharply criticised the government for claiming that a vote by Dáil Éireann to approve the IMF-ECB deal would give it ‘political legitimacy’.

AIB's timing last week was poor. Announcing that they were going to pay 40 million euro in bonuses to the very incompetents that got us into this mess on the same day as the Dáil was announcing savage cuts to unemployment and family benifits, was definitely negative PR.

In recent weeks, the signs of anger among the peoples of Europe have been increasing: a general strike in Portugal, the huge September 29 strike in Spain, demonstrations of historic proportions in Ireland, the student movement in England, the enormous protests in Italy by factory workers and students and the growing mass movement against the privatization of water and, hopefully, the beginning of a lasting movement following the mobilizations over pension reforms in France. Though the slogans may vary from one country to the next, the revolt has the same origin: the peoples' refusal to pay for a crisis they did not cause, to have to put up with austerity measures by themselves, without the capitalists having to pay.The case of Ireland is emblematic - reduced social benefits, staff cuts in the public sector and cuts to public sector workers' pay, the extension of income tax to those who do not currently pay, the lowest-paid workers. But the government is not touching corporate tax, however, one of the lowest in Europe. The Irish people are refusing to bow down and tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in late November.

Several hundred people took part in "A Spectacle Of Defiance And Hope" in Dublin Friday night to protest the way the government have cut funding to vital community services. Janice Feighery a co-ordinator at an after school computer program for young people said “Community programmes are being devastated by the cuts. Our work with young people is strangled by lack of funds."  The spectacle draws to a close the week of protests against the austerity budget.

At just after 5 p.m. Wednesday evening, 600 angry marchers took to the streets of Cork city to demonstrate their opposition to the 2011 budget and the state's IMF- and EU-designed four-year plan. Marchers assembled on Patrick's Bridge for some time before 5, and when sufficient numbers had arrived, the crowd moved up-river to the nearby Emmet Place in front of the Opera House, from where the march departed, led by the banner of the Cork Social Welfare Defenders campaign.

Budget day 2011 saw vicious cuts being imposed on ordinary working people across Ireland to pay the massive costs of the bailout of Ireland’s banking system. A deeply unpopular government, in the service of the richest 1% of the population imposed cuts and tax hikes totalling 6 billion euro, cuts which will be supervised by the ECB and IMF. Around two thousands peopled gathered at at the Dáil that evening with the first protest taking place early that morning, when Gardai hastily tore the slogans off a cherry picker that had been placed outside the Dáil.